Data representative of real-world scenes (i.e., scenes that include places and things existing in the real world, as opposed to scenes that are entirely virtual, imaginary, computer generated, or the like) may be captured for use in various applications. For example, video data and/or other types of data representative of a real-world scene may be captured to generate a recreation or model of the real-world scene for entertainment, manufacturing, educational, and/or other types of applications.
Virtual reality media content is one example of an application where data representative of real-world scenes may be captured. Virtual reality media content may be used to immerse viewers (or “users”) into interactive virtual reality worlds that the users may experience by directing their attention to any of a variety of things being presented in the immersive virtual reality world at the same time. For example, at any time during the presentation of the virtual reality media content, a user experiencing the virtual reality media content may look around the immersive virtual reality world in any direction, giving the user a sense that he or she is actually present in and experiencing the immersive virtual reality world from a particular vantage point within the immersive virtual reality world. In some examples, virtual reality media content may be generated to represent immersive virtual reality worlds that are based on data (e.g., video data, audio data, etc.) of real-world scenes captured using one or more capture devices (e.g., video cameras, etc.).
Unfortunately, current methods of capturing data representative of real-world scenes may have various drawbacks and limitations, particularly when several distinct capture devices are used to simultaneously capture data representative of the same real-world scene. For example, when a plurality of capture devices provide captured video data representative of the real-world scene (e.g., video data representing different parts of the real-world scene, video data representing the real-world scene from different vantage points, etc.) to a central processing server concurrently, the server may have to expend significant processing resources organizing, sorting, ordering, synchronizing, and otherwise processing and preparing the incoming data prior to being able to combine or otherwise make use of the data captured by the different capture devices (e.g., to generate virtual reality media content or the like).
Additionally, even if powerful computing resources (e.g., very fast processors, etc.) are available to perform the organizing, sorting, ordering, synchronizing, and other processing described above, it may be difficult or impractical to scale such resources upward in the event that system requirements change and evolve. For example, conventional techniques used to capture data representative of a real-world scene in one implementation may not necessarily scale up to capture a larger real-world scene, to capture the real-world scene using a larger number of capture devices, to capture the real-world scene at a higher capture quality (e.g., video resolution, etc.), or the like.